


When Night Sets In

by bendingwind



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 14:56:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They live out their lives in a dying world, forbidden to touch.Prompt by winninghearts, for the Hell in Hells ficathon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Night Sets In

They live out their lives in a dying world, forbidden to touch.

* * *

He begs her to kill him for the universe, for all the beings that were never born and aren’t born and will never be born. So that time can happen and lives can happen and moments can flow, one to another, that steady progression of joy and pain and fear and love. He begs her for this, an act of selflessness, a sacrifice for everyone that ever was and ever will be.

“I’ll suffer if I have to kill you,” she responds, staring steady ahead with tears in her eyes. And no one ever denied that love was mad and impossible and, above all, _selfish._

In this world, she locks him away behind iron bars and spends her days with him, eyes and words and hearts, but never hands.

* * *

Love is as inherently unselfish as it is greedy, and so as she sits beyond the bars of his cage he begs her, for himself. For his sake, for her own; for the lives they lived in an unbroken time, and the kisses they shared and the adventures they had. For Asgard and the Bone Meadows, for the Hynierean Heist and prison-cell trysts and love and lust and touch and joy.

She rests a hand on the bars before she leaves that day, and gives him a broken smile.

When he reaches for her, she pulls back.

“I’m sorry, my love,” she whispers before she walks away.

* * *

The days tick by without time and the moon goes dark and the seas dance across the world like living water, like the northern lights made manifest—and still, he remains here, behind iron bars with salvation just beyond arm’s length. He pleads with her still, until that is all that passes his lips, begging and babbling requests, desperation and despair. And she sits there with her sad, broken face, and sometimes she cries, and one day she stops answering.

“For us,” he begs, again and again, “For love of me, please, just end this.”

They are the last two left when the end closes in around them, and the world tastes like ashes, and still she says nothing.

“Please, _please_ River, you have to kill me!” he asks of her, as color and life fade.

She replies, for the final time. “I am.”

* * *

  


**Author's Note:**

> I have not read the other fill for the prompt (I need to do that now, in fact), so hopefully I didn't just write the exact same thing. :/


End file.
